Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Orange Mascarpone Cream Ladyfinger Verrines

While I do enjoy baking or putting together bakes and desserts which
challenge me, I also love the simplest and the easiest of them. The kinds which are fun, easy
and sure to succeed like the endlessly versatile verrines. They are a joy to
make as you don’t have to sweat over the finish or fuss over the decoration as
you would in a frosted cake. A verrine is a confection originally from France, made by layering ingredients in a verrine (glass). It can be either sweet or savory, making a dessert or snack - Wikipedia. These single serve desserts can easily be personalized for folks with different tastes
or just to humor your kids. Made with fatless sponges or
ladyfingers, these conveniently benefit
from advance preparation, making verrines a hostesses' dream.

The best thing about verrines is even bits or odd
sized chunks of leftover
fatless sponge or just enough broken ladyfingers work just great!
Amusing as it may sound, a first attempt at baking a fatless sponge or a
genoise have me dissecting it into layers or cubes to see if its baked
properly and check if the cake will withstand a good dousing of syrup. And then make a dessert out of it! Go
ahead and bake that fatless sponge or some ladyfingers if you haven't yet – you can tear up the
cake or break the handful of ladyfingers and still make an impressive dessert
out of it – and no one needs to know!

I
had some ladyfingers in my freezer which I had originally intended
to use for making Tiramisu.
But since there weren’t enough of them, I ended up baking
some more. I had the older batch in my
freezer long enough to have me losing sleep over them. Some leftover whipped cream and mascarpone
came in handy and conveniently found their way into these Orange Mascarpone Ladyfinger Verrines – ladyfingers
soaked in sweetened orange juice, layered with some zesty mascarpone whipped
cream. And just a smidgen of ganache at the bottom of each glass as orange and
chocolate make a superb pairing!

I must admit, am really partial to fat-less sponges and ladyfingers for use
in trifles or any recipe which needs the cake to be brushed or dunked in syrup
however briefly. I prefer not to use
butter cakes and the kind as they tend to get sort of pasty once soaked. And no, no
ready cake from a super-market please!

Here is what I did to make 3 tallish glasses. You could take
the below recipe ( I know I can hardly call this one!) as approximate
quantities . Feel free to tweak and change according to your taste and
preference, less fingers more cream, you could use just sweetened whipped cream or cream and mascarpone mixed
in any ratio you like, use some ganache or chopped orange segments or toasted chopped walnuts or almonds
in the mid layers …As I said, this is just an idea, let the creativity flow!

Ingredients:

Ladyfingers / savoiardi : About 10-15 (more or less depending on the size of your glasses and the size
of the ladyfingers and your preference)

Sweetened whipping cream – 1/2 cup or more (to make one cup of whipped cream)

Have your glasses
ready. Mix the orange juice, enough water and sugar. I like this tasting
orangey, sweetish but not tart. Add a splash of vanilla. Whip the
cream and zest together to form soft
peaks. (If the cream is beaten to stiffer peaks, it will be difficult to
pipe
into the glasses, soft cream has more textural appeal too) Take the
mascarpone in a medium sized bowl, add powdered sugar to taste (remember
that the whipped cream is already sweet) whisk it lightly to break it
up if firm. Gently
fold it into the whipped cream. Fill in a pastry bag without a nozzle or a
large round tip.

Spoon
some ganache (about 2 teaspoons in each glass) into each glass. Pipe some cream over it. Break
the ladyfingers to fit in your glasses. Soak the ladyfingers
in the orange juice-water mix briefly (I like my ladyfingers thoroughly
moistened) placing them in a layer on top of the cream. Pipe some orange mascarpone cream on top of the lady finger layer. Spoon more ganache and some nuts if using.
Repeat with another layer of lady fingers and finally more mascarpone
cream. Chill for several hours, a day would be great. Garnish with fresh
orange or chocolate curls and nuts just before serving.

Enjoy the dessert and the happy sounds of clink-clank-scrape-scrape as you dig into the glasses!

Please Note : Alter the quantities of sugar, orange juice and water depending on the
sweetness /tartness of the juice. Unless making these with all left over components, its better to have more rather than less of each on hand. Any component left over can be put to another use. Orange zest - Wash the oranges with hot water to get rid of the wax, or you may not get zest good enough. I once made something which tasted faintly of orange though I used a fair amount of zest, thanks to the wax coating.